Critic Reviews

I find that The Punisher is amazing to play, the action comes thick and fast and the variety of kills provide much amusement, the special kills and interrogations add to the game even more and you may well find yourself going through some levels multiple times unlocking things just because they are so much fun to play, anyone who likes violent games will feel right at home with The Punisher, fans of the 3rd-person-action genre - to which The Punisher is a very worth addition – will find hours and hours of quality gameplay for them here.

We all know that movie and comic book-driven games have been hit-and-miss, and unfortunately it’s mostly been miss, but as of late the quality of these titles has been increasing. Two great examples are last year’s Chronicles of Riddick and Spider-man 2. These games in particular showed us that games based on a movie or comic book can actually provide a unique and entertaining experience.

Behind the gore, The Punisher does nothing new. But what it does, it does very well and it'll
keep you going until you finish it simply because won't want to miss out on any of the spectacular torture set-pieces. Yes, you've played thousands of 'man-in-flowing-coat' games and, yes, this dishes up the same 'third-person-room-clearing' gameplay but that doesn't mean it's not fun. In an exquisitely brutal, 18-rated certificate kind of way, of course.

Reviewing video games for a living, I've had the opportunity to witness all sorts of sadistic acts on my television. Nothing, however, has quite measured up to THQ's The Punisher. This is the type of game media watchgroups love to loathe. It's so violent, so bloody, that the ESRB forced developer Volition to snuff some of the gorier moments, muting violent interrogations in black and white. Despite the ESRB's efforts, The Punisher remains gleefully violent with more than 100 inventive methods for torture and death.

Gamers intuition can be a dangerous thing. This intuition is what tells you that The Bouncer is going to be amazing when it releases, or that Katamari Damacy looks like it’s going to suck. Gamer’s intuition may have both surprised and disappointed me in the past, but I love when it holds true when dealing with games that not everyone believes are going to be good. The Punisher represents this kind of game. I’ve heard that this game is a Max Payne rip off from other reviews which I think is a bit misleading.

THQ’s The Punisher goes to great lengths to perfectly emulate the feel of reading a recent Punisher comic, while also doing its best to push the envelope when it comes to just how violent a video game can be. This might seem to be shameless sensationalism, if not for the sort of character the Punisher is. An angry, vicious anti-hero, the pages of a Punisher comic – especially recent ones – will always be full of depictions of socially reprehensible acts, usually being committed by the titular character. For a character that is so completely an exercise in violent excess, the remarkable sadism inherent in this title’s gameplay was simply a must.

The first time through? Definitely. I couldn’t put the controller down. “One more level, then I’ll go to bed.” The game definitely pulls you in and makes you want to run straight through from start to finish in one sitting. But after you’re done that, much like the replayability, it loses points for being a bit repetative. But hey, it’s not like the gameworld is the size of San Andreas, or anything. No biggie.

The Punisher doesn't bring much new to the table, but what it does bring is done well. If you want pure, unadulterated violence, you came to the right place. Still, I can't help but be a little disappointed in this title -- especially coming from Volition, of Red Faction fame. It's a little too by-the-book, even if that book is covered with the blood of Frank Castle's victims.

Though many games today take elements from existing titles and try to put their own spin on them, this form of imitation isn't always a bad thing. There's something to be said for honing a concept. But the possibility that the new twist on an old formula won't actually improve the overall product certainly exists. The Punisher, a long-running Marvel Comics franchise about a vigilante trying to save the world from being overrun by scumbags, is no stranger to this concept. Back in 1993, the character appeared in an arcade game from Capcom that basically started with Final Fight as a template, and then dropped in The Punisher, Nick Fury, and so on. It wasn't so great. Now, THQ and Volition have delivered a new game with The Punisher name. While it attempts to put its own spin on the third-person shooter genre by adding sometimes-gruesome interrogation sequences, this game is, more or less, Max Payne without the bullet time.

Say one thing for the guys behind the Punisher game, they understand the character. In the opening cinema, the Punisher wastes a pack of mob thugs and calmly executes even the last stragglers who try to escape or lie wounded, begging on the floor. He doesn't do it with a cool pause for effect or a smirk, he just does it. He's not an honorable or a merciful man, but a person who kills criminals. That's all he does.

The Punisher's fun at first, but soon becomes repetitive-both in terms of the Punisher's actions and the criminals' voice responses. Add to that weak graphics and animation, as well as not enough opportunities to "enjoy" Punisher's originality, and you end up with an adventure that turns a bit stale too quickly.

The Punisher presents a peculiar moral conundrum. Having successfully extracted the necessary information from some hapless meat grinder soldier (not surprising given the extremely large snake salivating a mere foot from his head), three options present themselves to the main protagonist of this uninspiring story, one severely pissed off Frank Castle.

Frank Castle. Apart from sounding like a 70s game show host/old school comedian, he's actually probably the biggest double-hard bastard ever to star in a videogame. Forget John Rambo, sneer at Max Payne. This man is virtually immortal as bullets bounce off his frame almost apologetically, and any wounds he might incur along the way will magically heal over so long as he has someone to slaughter viciously nearby in as gratuitous a fashion as you can possibly imagine.